Shooting at Moving Targets
HAM features allow making it harder (or easier) to hit a moving target. This alters a gameplay feature that existed, to a limited extend, in the original Jagged Alliance 2. History It has always been more difficult, in Jagged Alliance 2, to hit a moving target than a stationary target. The more tiles your target has moved so far this turn, the harder it is to hit. This goes in accordance with real-world warfare. In JA2, for every tile that a target has moved so far this turn, anyone shooting at this target will get a flat -1.5% chance to hit. If the target ran 10 tiles, shooters will receive a -15% CtH penalty. The largest penalty that can be dished out this way is -30%. Doing the quick maths, this happens when a character has run 20 tiles this turn, which is almost the maximum amount of tiles that can be run in a single turn. Anything beyond 20 tiles doesn't help. Unfortunately, this penalty is relatively poor, and its effect is very minimal compared to the Chance-to-Hit-Enhancing power of scopes, tracer ammo, etcetera. HAM 2 - Externalizing the Tile-to-Penalty Ratio The first HAM feature to deal with this specific issue allowed adjusting the ratio between Tiles Moved and the size of the Penalty itself. By increasing this value, each tile moved produces a larger penalty for shooters. In other words, to achieve the same penalty, the target now has to move less. You can also decrease the value, making moving targets harder to hit. Unfortunately, at that stage, the limit on the size of the penalty was still -30%, so no matter how high you set the ratio, shooters cannot lose more than this relatively small amount of accuracy. HAM 3 - Externalizing the Limit HAM 3 introduced the complementary feature that allows changing the maximum size of the penalty. This goes hand-in-hand with the Tile-to-Penalty Ratio of course. Setting the limit very high has no effect unless the ratio is also high enough to allow characters to actually reach that limit. For instance, if the limit is set to 90, and a character can only travel up to 20 tiles per turn, then the ratio must be 4.5, otherwise characters will not be able to reach the limit at all. Conversely, you can also lower the limit. This will generally make moving characters much easier to hit, regardless of how many tiles they've moved. In this case, the ratio is less important - it only determines how quickly the character reaches the limit when moving. Please consult the recommended values below before adjusting either the ratio or the limit. Final formula with both HAM settings in place: When using HAM 3, you can control the entire system using this formula: Shooter's Penalty = (X*Y), but no more than Z. X = Tiles that the target has moved, so far this turn. Y = Tiles-to-Penalty Ratio, as defined by the INI setting MOVEMENT_EFFECT_ON_AIMING Z = Maximum possible penalty, as defined by the INI setting MAX_CTH_PENALTY_FOR_MOVING_TARGET Therefore: Shooter's Penalty = ( Tiles Moved * MOVEMENT_EFFECT_ON_AIMING), but no more than MAX_CTH_PENALTY_FOR_MOVING_TARGET INI Settings: There are two settings to control this feature. One changes the maximum limit of the penalty, the other changes the speed required to reach that limit. MOVEMENT_EFFECT_ON_AIMING MAX_CTH_PENALTY_FOR_MOVING_TARGET See Also Category:Features Category:Combat Features Category:Externalized Settings